


Secret Santa

by eucatastrophe__x



Category: The Hobbit RPF
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Office, Colleagues - Freeform, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Jealousy, Love Confessions, M/M, Mistletoe, Pining, Secret Crush, Secret Santa, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-30
Updated: 2015-12-30
Packaged: 2018-05-10 01:29:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 19,478
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5563537
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eucatastrophe__x/pseuds/eucatastrophe__x
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>When Richard pulled Lee’s name out of the hat for their workplace Secret Santa, he realised immediately that it should be treated as the greatest of blessings, rather than a curse.</p>
<p>Objectively speaking, finding a gift for Lee should have been an easy task – they were, after all, friends as well as colleagues. It just had to be something special, something personal, and ideally something that subtly conveyed the secret that Richard had been carrying around with him for nearly a year.</p>
<p>And therein lay the rub – because what gift would be good enough for the man with whom he was unequivocally and hopelessly in love?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Secret Santa

When Richard pulled Lee’s name out of the hat for their workplace Secret Santa, he realised immediately that it should be treated as the greatest of blessings, rather than a curse.

He’d always been abysmal on the gift selection front – so anxious that he’d get the wrong thing or that a gag gift would be misinterpreted that he stuck unwaveringly with chocolates. They never went down badly, of course, but they didn’t exactly inspire the gales of laughter that some of his colleagues’ gifts did. The problem with working at an advertising agency was that so many of the creative team were just that – _creative_ – and it came across in their gift-buying as much as it did in their work. They would always come up with the perfect thing, usually a nod to a funny conversation that they’d had with the recipient or an incident that had occurred earlier in the year. The most memorable ones had been talked about for literally years. Needless to say, none of Richard’s had ever fallen into that category.

This year, though, things were going to be different.

“Well?” Madison asked impatiently, still proffering the hat, “did you get someone other than yourself?”

He tore his eyes away from the name written on the piece of paper in Madison’s loopy cursive and tucked it into his jacket pocket for safekeeping. “Yeah, I did.”

He’d been inexplicably jittery with excitement for the rest of the afternoon, completely unable to concentrate on his work, even though the Christmas drinks where the presents were exchanged weren’t going to be held for more than six weeks. It was a good thing that Madison, their receptionist, was both ridiculously organised and obsessed with all things Christmas – it gave him time to really think about what he was going to get for Lee, and track down whatever he managed to come up with. It had to be something special, something personal, and ideally something that conveyed the fact that Richard was in love with him.

It hadn’t happened straight away, of course, but Richard would be lying if he said he didn’t remember the day Lee first walked into the office in his fancy suit, clean-shaven and hair carefully slicked back, looking every inch the hardened professional. He’d come to their boutique advertising agency from one of the bigger ones in the city, the kind where they worked their young account execs to the bone and expected them to look impeccable at all times. It was a soul-sucking place – everyone knew that much – but the time Lee had spent there hadn’t managed to dim his enthusiasm for advertising or the brightness of his smile as he worked his way around the office introducing himself to everyone (even Richard, whom he had ambushed when he ventured out of the finance corner to make himself his morning cup of tea in the break room).

That had been nearly a year ago.

Nowadays Lee was more prone to the rumpled look – he only ever wore a jacket and tie when he was off to a meeting, and he had an unfortunate habit of rolling his sleeves up in a way that tended to make Richard lose his train of thought completely. He’d abandoned the hair gel and the strict shaving routine and cropped his mop shorter, but that only made it look softer and increased Richard’s yearning to run his fingers through it. And he still approached every day at work with a passion that Richard admired – it was certainly unparalleled by anyone else at the agency – which meant that clients and management alike adored him. Normally that would have been a reason for jealousy amongst the other account execs, but the thing with Lee was that he was just so genuinely likeable that no one could ever resent him at all.

Richard, too (well, perhaps more so, and for different reasons than most of the others, if he was honest with himself) was captivated: Lee’s professional ability and charm aside, he had a boisterous laugh that never failed to make Richard smile, was unfailingly friendly and positive, didn’t have an ego the size of a tank like a lot of the other account execs, and generally just went out of his way to be kind to everyone.

The fact that he was staggeringly handsome didn’t hurt, either.

But there was a big difference between admiring Lee from afar and falling in love with him – and, in retrospect, Richard could pinpoint when he’d started the slippery slide towards the latter in earnest, just under two months after the man had first walked through the door.

It was a Saturday morning in early March, the city still decidedly wintery – not snowing but dark-skied and threatening rain, and definitely still cold enough for Richard to need his woollen coat as he did all his usual neighbourhood errands. The chill in the air had encouraged him to stop by the antique bookshop on his way home – it had been a while since his last visit, and it was always warm in there, and the owner never minded customers who became absorbed in his wares (even if doing so meant that they blocked the haphazard aisles, only skinny enough for one person at a time).

He wandered unthinkingly through the shop, picking up books at random but not finding anything in particular that caught his fancy until he turned into the farthest aisle to be confronted with something – someone, rather – entirely unexpected.

“Lee.”

The word popped out of his mouth unconsciously, louder – much louder – than it needed to be, and Lee looked up from the book he’d had his nose in, the surprise on his face at hearing his name melting into a smile.

“Hi, Richard.”

He was almost embarrassingly relieved by the fact that Lee recognised him and knew his name (he would consider, much later, when he was replaying the interaction, how horrifying it would have been had Lee not quite been able to work out who he was, leaving him to explain that they worked together but Richard kept to himself so much that they’d never actually interacted one on one before) – so relieved, in fact, that he actually vocalised it.

“You know who I am?”

He wanted to kick himself for the moronic comment as soon as he’d said it – god, Richard, he’s going to think you’re such an idiot – and, sure enough, Lee’s eyebrows drew together slightly in confusion, although his smile didn’t waver at all.

“Of course I do. We met on my first day of work. Richard Armitage, finance team, the only person in the office smart enough to drink tea rather than the godawful swill the coffee machine churns out.”

Richard blinked. He only vaguely remembered making the comment about the coffee machine – it really was appalling, but everyone else suffered it, preferring the convenience of a bad coffee to having to waste time queuing at one of the cafes downstairs – and yet here was Lee reciting it as though it was something profound and important. “That’s right,” he said, his voice faint and probably audibly perplexed, but Lee didn’t seem to notice or care.

“But you’re English, after all, so I suppose it goes with the territory?”

“It’s in my genes,” he agreed seriously, “I’m powerless to resist the call of a good cup of tea.”

That got a laugh out of Lee, incongruously loud in the sedate little shop, and the embarrassed, nervous little knot in Richard’s stomach started to unravel ever so slightly. “What are you reading?” he asked, awkward yet curious – but Lee just snapped the book closed and lifted it so Richard could scan the front and then back covers. “Just picked it up – looks good, don’t you think?”

“Actually, yeah. It looks great. I read one of hers a couple of years ago, and it really stuck with me. I’ve been meaning to track her others down ever since.”

His response only earned him another of those wide beams – he’d seen them around the office in the months since Lee had joined the team, but had never before had them directed at him, had never before done anything that merited one – but the beam quickly turned mischievous.

“So what you’re telling me is that this book is –”

“Just my cup of tea?” Richard finished, raising his eyebrows sternly at the terrible joke, but only able to maintain the expression for a second before they both started to laugh again, the look on Lee’s face telling him that that was exactly the pun he’d been intending to make – and it felt pretty damn good to get humour so right on the first attempt, the words coming out naturally without several rounds of mental rehearsal.

“Is this your neighbourhood, then?” Lee asked once they’d recovered, having already slipped the book under his arm to join the two others he’d already picked up, and Richard nodded.

“Yeah, my apartment is five blocks or so from here, but I’ve been out doing errands all morning and figured I’d swing by on my way home. How about you?”

“Actually,” Lee wavered, “no, not my neighbourhood at all – more like fifty blocks out of my way.”

As lovely as it would have been to discover that he and Lee were neighbours (it wasn’t as if Richard would ever have acted on it, but it would have been strangely nice to know that he was only ever a few blocks away and that they frequented all the same places without even trying), he was more interested in working out why Lee had travelled so far just to come to this tiny little shop. 

“I’m a little bit of a book fanatic,” Lee admitted, foreseeing the question, gesturing to the collection tucked under his arm, “and I have an unfortunate tendency to traipse around the city looking for obscure places where I can pick up more. I only found out about this one a few weeks ago. And you? Or do I have my answer in the fact that you’re spending your Saturday morning in an antique bookstore, too?”

“Yes, I think that tells you everything you need to know,” Richard grinned. It wasn’t exactly the most exciting of hobbies – his friends indulged him, letting him natter on about old volumes he’d found and new ones he’d bought or borrowed from the library – but it wasn’t something he was prone to discuss with strangers. And Lee was still a stranger, objectively, despite the warm and open and friendly expression to which he was treating Richard – the expression that made him feel like maybe he wouldn’t be disrupting Lee’s morning too much if he kept the conversation going for a little bit longer.

“So… have you read anything good lately?”

They stayed right there in the aisle, and Richard at least was too mesmerised by the sound of Lee’s voice to notice the disgruntled mutterings of the other customers as they tried to squeeze around them. It wasn’t until one man very loudly asked them to please move that they did so, Lee looking just as embarrassed as Richard felt.

“Time to beat a hasty retreat, do you think?”

Richard didn’t know how to ask what exactly he meant by that – whether Lee was trying to wind things up politely and continue his solitary shopping, or whether, against all odds, he was suggesting that they head out together – so contented himself with a silent nod, trailing after Lee as he paid for his books, both shivering at the blast of frigid air that met them as Lee opened the door, ushering Richard out first.

“Ever been to Scopa?” Lee asked, rubbing his gloved hands together. “This weather’s got me in the mood for one of their hot chocolates, but I’m sure they’ll do you a pot of tea if you’d prefer. Unless you have other things to do, of course?”

Astonishingly, his second interpretation of Lee’s comment had been correct.

Richard had not, in fact, been to Scopa – he’d seen the name often enough, but had never actually ventured inside – and he concluded swiftly that passing it by had been a terrible decision. The hot chocolates (Lee had sung their praises non-stop during the walk down the block) were to die for, so rich that they almost made him light-headed – then again, that could have just been a side effect of being in Lee’s presence for an extended period of time. And an extended time it was, too – they’d had to order more drinks to stop the café staff giving them the evil eye for occupying one of the desirable window tables, watching as the weather turned sourer still and then started to rain. There was an insistent little voice in the back of Richard’s head, suggesting that the downpour was the only reason Lee was lingering in his company – but for some perplexing reason, he seemed to be genuinely enjoying himself. Somehow he understood immediately that Richard was an innately quiet person but that he wanted to hear Lee talk about himself, so he told him about his life and interests and, in particular, his book collecting. He’d been doing it for years, he said, and loved nothing more than a weekend mosey amongst the shelves at one of the stores he frequented, looking for new titles to add. It was a topic that Richard felt comfortable contributing to, and so they whiled away the hours discussing some of their favourite authors and where to find the best books in the city, both managing to find some new spots to include on their lists of old haunts in the process.

And when they finally parted ways, Richard left with an embarrassingly gooey smile on his face and a faint fluttering in his stomach that reminded him of his long-past teenage years. Suddenly, the end of the weekend couldn’t come fast enough.

But he didn’t see Lee at all at work on Monday, and was too shy to make the effort himself. The fact that Lee didn’t come looking for him led him to the inexorable conclusion that their meeting and hot chocolate drinking had been a one-off. No matter how friendly Lee had been, he had no intention of it turning into anything more. This was reality, and reality was shit. He knew that already.

So it was somewhat astonishing, then, when he heard a shout to hold the elevator as he was heading downstairs for lunch on Tuesday. There was a public food court on the first floor of their building, something that all the staff appreciated wholeheartedly, especially when it was bitter outside or they only had a couple of minutes to grab something. Richard ate there most days, rotating around the various outlets depending on what he felt like, and had decided mid-morning that today was definitely going to be a sushi day. But he stuck his hand out obligingly, only for Lee to dart into the elevator, nearly flattening the woman standing next to Richard before straightening up with a wide smile.

“Thanks, Richard.”

“No problem,” he said faintly, slightly alarmed by Lee’s exuberance and how inexplicably pleased he appeared to be to see him.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get the chance to talk to you yesterday, by the way,” he chattered on, entirely oblivious to the other people in the elevator, “contrary client, day full of meetings trying to placate them, you know how it is.”

Richard didn’t – he spent his days doing his best to avoid precisely that kind of conflict. Working with numbers wasn’t an emotional task, and on the rare occasion that they needed to speak to a client about payment, he would delegate the task to someone else. Even so, he smiled and nodded, doing his best (but probably failing miserably) to keep the conversation alive.

“Of course – not a problem. What did you want to talk about?” he asked obligingly, hoping against hope that it was some follow-on from their meeting on the weekend, but knowing that it was much more likely to be a work-related question

“I wanted to tell you that I finished that book.”

“Already?” he responded, unable to stop the interest and surprise that had immediately crept into his tone. He knew what Lee was talking about straight away – the book that he’d been inspecting when Richard had stumbled across him three days previously, the one that he’d seemed even keener to purchase once Richard had said that he enjoyed the author’s works.

“Yeah, started on it as soon as I got home, and didn’t move from the couch on Sunday. Took a little while to hook me, but once it had, damn. I see why you said the last one of hers that you read stayed with you for years afterwards. Tell you what,” Lee suggested with a grin as the elevator doors opened onto the food court, “have lunch with me and I’ll tell you all about it.”

How could Richard say no to that?

They found a moderately quiet spot to eat, Lee laughing at the way Richard arranged his sushi pretentiously, all the while tucking into his wrap. He told him about the book, as promised – even said he’d bring it in for him to borrow – but Richard was still only halfway through his sushi before the conversation had moved on, just like it had on Saturday.

It usually took Richard a little while to warm up to people, not least those with whom he felt he had little in common, but Lee was so goddamn friendly and approachable (and his expressive face and overenthusiastic gesticulating were rather endearing, too) that he found himself sharing far more than he normally would have with a colleague whom he’d barely spoken to before. The lunch hour passed much faster than it usually did, even though he spent most others lost in whatever book he was reading at the time. It was disappointing to say the least when they had to head back to work, Lee thanking him for a very enjoyable hour with a broad smile before disappearing down the hall towards his office on the other side of the floor.

Richard didn’t do any work at all for the rest of the day, too busy replaying every moment of the conversation and the brightness of Lee’s smile and enjoying the contented warmth curling in his stomach, a sensation he’d not felt for a very long time – but again, concluding that it was most likely an interaction that wasn’t going to be repeated. Lee had done as he’d promised, told him about the book, and he was under no obligation to ever socialise with Richard again.

And so he was surprised when the same thing happened the following Tuesday – Lee catching up to him just as he was heading downstairs for lunch, falling into step beside him naturally, starting up an idle conversation and maintaining it as they both bought their food and then ate it – and the Tuesday after that, and the Tuesday after that, until suddenly their weekly catch ups had become a solid (and thoroughly lovely) part of his routine.

And every Tuesday, Lee would say or do something that made Richard fall a little bit more in love.

It took a while for him to admit it to himself – that he’d moved way beyond the realm of a mere crush – but it was liberating once he did. It left him free to admire Lee properly, in the way that he should be admired, without feeling at all confused by the traitorous (and energetic) butterflies in his stomach that arrived on Tuesday mornings and lingered well into the afternoon. It wasn’t just that the man was beautiful (and Christ, he was, that warm gaze and bright smile and touchable hair and broad shoulders and big, sexy hands – Richard had spent many an evening lying in bed and thinking about all of his features, and yeah, those thoughts hadn’t always been the purest, if he was honest with himself); no, it was more that he was so easy to talk to and had a similar sense of humour and every time they ate together they found something else they had in common, tiny little scraps of shared likes and dislikes that went way beyond their tastes in reading material. The way that Lee listened to him, constantly encouraged him to speak his mind, treated his opinions like they merited discussion… he felt like he was withdrawing from his shell a little more with every conversation. Even his team had picked up on it, with colleagues commenting that he was speaking up a lot more during team meetings and seemed more willing to express his ideas (something that he was usually quite hesitant to do, preferring to trundle along dependably in the background and let others make the big calls). The first time someone had mentioned it, he’d just given them a confused look, but the more he thought about it, the more he realised they were right, and that it all came back to those Tuesdays with Lee.

They didn’t always go to the food court, of course – there was a bakery down the street that they were pretty partial to (especially once Lee introduced Richard to their custard squares), along with a great hole in the wall Thai takeaway – and on the days when it wasn’t too chilly outside they would leave the sanctuary of their building to venture further afield. Richard loved the way that Lee’s nose and cheeks would pinken in the cold, and the way that he’d try in vain to flatten down his hair as soon as they were out of the wind. They were well-matched for speed, marching along in tandem, and that too made Richard giddy.

As the weather warmed up, their exploring continued. They discovered a park four or five blocks away, accessible down an alley that Richard hadn’t known existed, and learned how easy it was to fall off the grid for an hour, sprawling on the grass and letting the sun beat down on them, their grins reflected in each other’s sunglasses. No one at work ever asked where they went, and for that Richard was grateful – it gave him an hour each week when he had Lee’s undivided attention.

But one Wednesday in early August, as he quietly ate his salad in the food court, it suddenly became apparent that he wasn’t the only one vying for that attention.

“Richard?”

He looked up from his book in surprise – it had been good (great, even) and he was skimming it again before he told Lee about it. He was certain that he’d love it, and that he’d want to analyse it at length, and he held that knowledge close to his chest. The spectacular plot and characters aside, it was set during the Vietnam War, something that he knew would resonate with Lee – he’d mentioned in passing that his dad was a veteran, and while the conversation hadn’t lingered there, Richard knew that it was a topic about which Lee was passionate to say the least.

There was something so satisfying about the way he’d learned to understand Lee’s tastes and views when it came to reading, little droplets of information that he’d fed to Richard over the past few months without realising – no matter how much their conversations swung from topic to topic, they would inevitably end up back at literature. But that understanding went both ways, and that thrilled him just as much – the fact that Lee had worked out what he liked, too. He would recommend books – even letting Richard borrow the odd one from his collection, which Richard found more than a little touching – but it had been the day that he’d first brought a gift from his weekend book-hunting expedition, explaining that he’d seen it in the shop and immediately thought of Richard as he pressed it into his hands, that had had the most profound impact on him. (The book had had pride of place on his bedside table ever since, and Lee had just laughed when Richard told him that he’d stayed up the whole night on Tuesday because he hadn’t been able to put it down, a reflection on both the calibre of the writing and how moved he’d been by Lee picking it out for him. Of course, Richard had declined to share that latter reason.)

This one, though – this one had the potential to be one of Lee’s lifetime favourites. But no matter how sure he was, he wasn’t sure enough to disrupt their routine by interrupting Lee’s Wednesday.

“Elliott,” he greeted the interruption, more than a little confused. Elliott was one of the firm’s most recent hires, still fairly new to the world of gainful employment, and so obviously young that he made Richard feel like a pensioner: a head shorter, carefully styled blond hair, went to the gym regularly and was always well-groomed and clean-shaven. (In a way, actually, he reminded Richard of a younger Lee, the Lee that had first walked into the office seven months ago).

Elliott tended to stick with the other account execs, and Richard, perhaps unsurprisingly, had had very little to do with him to date beyond the odd inane exchange about the weather at the water cooler. But there were things that he knew, had picked up from conversations around the office: he was incredibly bright, with wealthy parents (and still lived with them, which Richard was a little appalled by) and a degree from an excellent school. And he was good at his job – again, uncannily resembling Lee – a hard worker and a genuinely nice person who people couldn’t help but like. As he turned his wide, boyish smile on Richard, he counted himself amongst them – and yet he still didn’t understand why he was standing there in the first place.

“What can I do for you?”

“It’s just, well, I was wondering if I could talk to you. About Lee.”

“What about him?” Richard prompted, when Elliott didn’t elaborate readily, something akin to nervousness spreading across his face. It didn’t make any sense at all. Was he having problems working with Lee? If so, why had he picked Richard, rather than someone senior in his team, to confide in?

“I would prefer that you didn’t repeat this to anyone but, well, basically, he’s the most captivating man I’ve ever met and I’m carrying quite the torch for him.”

That answered that question, then.

“I see.”

On reflection, maybe Elliott wasn’t so difficult to dislike after all. It was a long time since Richard had felt a pang of jealousy this strong and sudden surge in his chest and clog his throat like toffee, and he didn’t like it. He didn’t like it at all.

There was also the fact that he definitely did not know Elliott well enough to be having this conversation with him – what little conversation it was, anyway, since he had only said a handful of words since it began, and they were already veering into territory of which he had no knowledge whatsoever. In the months since he and Lee had become friends, he had never mentioned anything to do with his sexuality – nor would Richard have expected him to. Of course, if Elliott was here, looking at him seriously, it was possible that he knew something Richard didn’t about which gender Lee was attracted to – and it was possible (cruelly ironic, but possible) that he had concluded that their weekly lunches meant something other than what they did.

Richard took a long slug of his drink, cleared his throat – anything to buy some more time to formulate his thoughts. “You know we’re just friends, right? There’s nothing going on there.”

“Of course,” Elliott acknowledged with another smile (and yeah, it hurt a little – wouldn’t it be nice to hear someone say that Lee didn’t look at him like they were _just friends_?), “but I mean, you know him. You know what he likes. I guess I was just wondering if you had any tips for me. I’d be incredibly grateful.”

He could say no.

It would be so easy to say no.

“Go to the library, and get this book,” he said quietly, holding it up so Elliott could see the title and author. “Once you’ve finished it, bring it up in conversation, and ask if he wants to borrow it. He will. Then talk to him about it. He’ll have a lot to say.”

Elliott did as he’d said – and it apparently worked better than he’d hoped. Because the following Tuesday, Richard made his way to their usual lunch spot alone, and when he got there, it was deserted. Lee was across the food court (his height always made him so easy to spot, Richard thought, smiling slightly despite himself), sitting so close to Elliott that their knees were touching, deep in conversation. He was wearing a variation of the look he got when he talked to Richard about literature, passion bubbling away under the surface. Elliott caught his eye and gave him a surreptitious thumbs up – and so, with a sigh, he carried his lunch back the way he’d come, picking a different seat and settling in to eat alone. Despite the fact that he did so almost every other day, it had never felt quite so depressing.

He spent the next couple of hours in a fog, the numbers on his screen blurring together until he wondered whether he should just call it a day, tell everyone he was sick, go home and go to bed – but just as he stood to grab his jacket, there was a knock at the door.

“Come in,” he called, looking up despite himself – and there was Lee, peeking his head around the doorframe shyly, the rest of his body out of sight, and Richard felt his bad mood dissipate almost instantaneously.

Oh, he was a lovesick fool.

“Hey, I – am I interrupting? Do you have somewhere you need to be?”

“Actually,” Richard said slowly, sitting back down, “no. Not at all. Please, come on in.”

Lee shuffled into the office, clutching several full paper bags that were unmistakeably from the bakery down the street – if the smell hadn’t given them away, the jam stain that he could see on one definitely did. He piled them atop Richard’s desk carefully before folding himself into the chair opposite him and looking up nervously.

“So, um, this is a peace offering – my way of apologising for today.”

Richard shook his head, confused. “You don’t have anything to apologise for.”

“I do. I stood you up at lunch. We always eat together on Tuesdays, and I missed it, and I’m sorry.”

Goddamn, the warmth that spread through his chest at those words was embarrassing, and he had to bite his cheek hard to tamp down his smile, trying his best to stay neutral (well, neutral-ish, because it was Lee, after all, and he could never be as serious as he would like when Lee was looking at him like that).

“So,” Lee continued, gesturing to the bags hopefully, “…afternoon tea? Unless you have something else you need to be doing… Because if you do, I can go.”

“Stop that,” Richard grinned, “I have nowhere to be, and no deadlines to meet, and the only thing I feel like doing right now is sitting here and stuffing my face with… you got me a custard square, didn’t you?”

“Hey, I told you it was an apology. So – how’s your week been?”

It wasn’t until Lee had got through a chocolate eclair and one of the donuts that he brought up his other lunchtime activities. “So anyway, the reason I couldn’t eat with you today was that Elliott cornered me to talk about this book he’d recommended that I read. It was great, actually – just up your alley. You should check it out. I had to give Elliott’s copy back to him, but you could get it out from the library once he’s returned it.”

“Write down the title for me,” Richard said faintly, digesting the fact that Lee had read the book and thought of him, a bittersweet irony. “You had a good chat about it, then?”

“Well, actually… no.”

There was a smudge of icing sugar from the donut on his top lip, and Richard wondered what would happen if he leaned over the desk and licked it off. (At least it gave him a reason – of sorts – to stare unabashedly at Lee’s mouth, an opportunity that he was going to make the most of as he kept talking.)

As it turned out, concentrating on his mouth also stopped him from grinning in vindictive triumph as Lee continued.

“I mean, obviously I’m touched that he read something, thought of me, went out of his way to recommend it, but… I couldn’t help but feel like most of the finer details went over his head. No, scratch that – most of the details, period.”

Maybe Richard should have recommended that he look online as well, check out Sparknotes, make sure he had a proper understanding of the book and its themes before he tried to discuss it with a literature buff like Lee.

Then again, he couldn’t really find it in himself to feel guilty.

“How so?”

No, not guilty at all.

Lee sighed. “Well, by way of background, it’s set during the Vietnam War and mostly revolves around this group of college friends who graduated just as the US really started to pour troops and resources into the war – so half of them end up going, and half stay behind. They end up all over the place – some in Vietnam, one working in Washington, one’s a journalist, another heavily involved in the anti-war movement – and different chapters are told from different characters’ perspectives. Anyway, Elliott kept getting all the characters confused, and really couldn’t understand why the ones who’d been drafted acted as they did in Vietnam. I’m guessing he’s just never really thought about what war is really like, or ever talked at length to someone who’s lived through it. I probably could have let that slide, though – it’s sort of understandable, after all, since most people probably didn’t grow up on war stories like I did – except there’s also a lot of discussion about the politics of the time, and, well, you know I can be a bit of a politics nut.”

Richard did. It was something they had talked about on many an occasion since Lee had first let slip that he’d picked up a political science paper in his freshman year at college to fill a gap in his timetable, and had ended up loving it so much that he’d tacked it on as an extra major.

It was also one of the reasons why he’d known that Lee would love the book.

“I do,” he agreed with a little smile, “and?”

“And… Elliott didn’t realise that that aspect of the book _wasn’t actually fiction._ He thought the author had made it all up. I know he went to a good school, so I don’t understand how he can be so obtuse. It’s the Vietnam War, for god’s sake – it’s not exactly ancient or obscure history, and the political landscape at the time is pretty well known. I just found the whole conversation extremely frustrating. Oh, and you know what else he said?”

Richard had to bite down on his tongue to stop himself from contributing (and by contributing, he really meant squawking about Elliott’s failures to grasp the fundamental tenets of the book, never mind American history and politics), distracting himself by watching Lee’s mouth as he talked. It was really quite obscenely beautiful, and he wondered if clients ever found themselves being hypnotised by it in the same way, agreeing to things without thinking or understanding, only coming to once the meeting was over and realising they had no recollection of anything that had been said.

Of course, his thoughts tended to stray fairly swiftly from how lovely and full his lips were and the little darts of his tongue over them to considerations of what they would feel like pressed to Richard’s own lips, his neck, and a variety of other places on his body.

Oh, that mouth.

God, it was distracting.

“…Richard?”

Too distracting.

He jerked out of his reverie, Lee watching him with a confused little tilt of his head, and he realised he’d been caught.

“Sorry, you, um… You’ve got a bit of, um…” he floundered, gesturing to his own mouth, grateful to have an excuse for staring. Thankfully, Lee got the message and wiped his lips, his fingers coming away sugary.

“I can’t believe you sat there deadpan for so long without telling me I had food on my face,” he laughed, not giving Richard a chance to apologise (even though he knew full well that Lee wasn’t really offended in the slightest) before – oh, god – sucking each of his fingers into his mouth in turn to get rid of the sticky sweetness. 

There was a faint stirring in Richard’s trousers.

“Anyway,” Lee added, with an embarrassed little grin, “I’ll shut up about the book. Sorry for rambling on, especially when you have no idea what I’m talking about and I’ve probably spoiled the whole thing for you.”

“You haven’t,” Richard laughed, “it sounds good, and I definitely think I’ll give it a go.”

“You really should. I’d love to know what you think of it.”

He waited an appropriate length of time before approaching Lee again and telling him that he’d finished it – and the following Tuesday, when they ate together again, it was the only thing they talked about. They were so absorbed in their analysis that it took a while for them to realise that the food court was emptying around them and they’d gone way over their allotted hour for lunch.

“Thank you,” Lee told him earnestly as they stood to go back to work, “I just thought the book was incredible and wanted to discuss it with you, because I knew you’d be up for a good debate, so I’m sorry if I monopolised the conversation with my ranting. In fact, I think I love it even more now that I know that you feel the same way.”

“You didn’t, and it’s fine, and I really did enjoy it, and I loved talking about it with you too.”

“I’m glad.” Lee offered a wide smile that Richard couldn’t help but mirror, wishing that he was courageous enough to touch his hand (or sweep him into an extremely non-platonic embrace, or press him against the wall in the elevator and kiss him until they arrived back at their floor…) but knowing that he wasn’t.

Elliott didn’t feature in their conversations at all in the weeks (months, even) that followed, and Richard had almost forgotten about the matter of his little crush – until the Tuesday when he invited himself along for lunch, sidling into the elevator with them and making conversation until it got to the point where it would have been downright rude not to suggest that he eat with them. It wasn’t that he was unwelcome – it was just that Richard would have preferred it if he went away (and, ideally, didn’t come back) because he was silently resenting the way that he was chewing into that precious uninterrupted weekly hour with Lee. It didn’t help that he’d squeezed in next to Lee, the limited space leaving them elbow to elbow (and probably, Richard thought somewhat sourly, their feet nudging each other under the table). What did help, though, was that Lee wanted to discuss at length the last book that Richard had loaned him, a conversation in which Elliott couldn’t participate at all. That didn’t stop him smiling or interjecting anywhere he could, though – and, once Lee had run out of steam, changing the topic completely, with an idle comment about dinner on Saturday.

Dinner.

Saturday.

Elliott.

_Lee._

“Dinner?” Richard repeated, doing his best to keep his tone and expression neutral, not doubting for a moment that Elliott had brought it up in front of him on purpose. Jesus, was that why Lee hadn’t mentioned him again? Had he decided that he was worth pursuing after all, and had that first lunch together turned into more, regardless of his subsequent complaining to Richard about Elliott’s inability to comprehend a good book?

“Not that kind of dinner,” Lee elaborated, and Elliott’s smile faltered for an instant before reappearing with more determination, “I promised a couple of the others in our team that they could come over and I’d cook for them, and it’s sort of turned into a thing that’s happening.”

Richard eyed him suspiciously – anything to tamp down his relief at Lee’s quick denial. “You? Cooking?”

“Don’t sound so surprised,” he protested with a grin, “of course I can cook.”

“You’ve never mentioned that before, so you’ll forgive me if I take your assertion with a grain of salt. Are you not being paid enough? Trying to prove a point to management by rounding up your colleagues and poisoning them?”

This time, Lee laughed – that huge, obnoxious, slightly embarrassing laugh that had people turning in their seats and that always made Richard flush slightly with pleasure at having caused it.

“I can cook,” he repeated, once he’d calmed down, “and if you don’t believe me, there’s only one way to find out.”

“What – wait to see if everyone makes it to work on Monday?”

Lee rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. “Very funny, Richard. No, there’s nothing for it, I’m sorry – you’ll have to join us.”

Now Elliott’s smile had definitely become strained. It clearly wasn’t the direction he’d expected the conversation to go. “Thought you said it was just for our little team?” he reminded Lee – gently, politely, and if Richard didn’t know better he would have thought nothing of it. It was bizarre that Elliott still seemed to see Richard as a threat – god, he and Lee had been lunching together for months, and if nothing had happened by now, it was probably never going to – and yet he’d framed the question to let Richard know that he wasn’t welcome. (Alternatively, was it possible that the book discussion gone so badly that he was holding Richard personally responsible for his failure to get into Lee’s pants?)

All of that just floated over Lee’s head, though, as he shook it cheerfully.

“No, I forgot to mention to you – the news seems to have spread, and the guest list has, um, tripled since the last time we talked about it. And it’s definitely not just the account execs anymore – so yeah, Richard, if you’re free, you should come along. I promise you’ll enjoy it, and that I won’t give you food poisoning.”

“In that case, how could I possibly say no?”

It wasn’t spite that motivated him to agree, not in the slightest – it was Lee’s gleeful little smile that only grew with the acquiescence, and the way that he doubled back after their return to work (the conversation had mercifully moved on after that to a subject slightly less fraught with tension until the end of their break) to check again.

“Hey – did you mean it? Before? You’ll come on Saturday?”

The childish hope in his tone made something in Richard’s chest contract. “Of course I’ll come.”

Sure enough, that Saturday night, he found himself standing outside Lee’s apartment building, clutching a bottle of wine. Gifts for dinner parties were easy, because wine was always the right thing to bring, and he had a fairly extensive collection at home that he could dip into. Lee greeted him with a warm smile, stashing the bottle somewhere out of reach and offering him a glass of the pinot that was open before retreating to the kitchen.

The meal had gone well – surprisingly so. Lee was, in fact, an even better cook than he had implied (and Richard knew he was going to have to eat humble pie on that front when he saw Lee the following Tuesday), and the quality of the conversation amongst the colleagues Lee had invited made Richard feel slightly guilty for spending most of his time at work only socialising within his team. The only downside to the evening was Elliott. He had made sure to nab the seat at the table next to Lee’s and was constantly in and out of the kitchen, ferrying plates and cutlery and rounding up empty bottles to recycle and seeming completely at home in the apartment. It made something twinge in Richard’s stomach, and it took only a couple of seconds for him to characterise it as jealousy. How did Elliott know where to find the spare wine glasses and napkins and the lighter for the candles with which Lee had set the table? Had he been here before? Had he… spent the night here before? Had his plan to woo Lee actually worked so well that the pair of them had made breakfast together in this very kitchen, clad only in underwear and unbuttoned shirts, after a night of passionate lovemaking?

He realised, belatedly, that as his imagination had gone into overdrive, his fingers had tightened around his fork like he was trying to snap it in two. Christ almighty, Richard, pull it together.

He’d kept his wine consumption to a minimum all night – enough to feel relaxed in a new environment and no more, grateful for the jug of iced water on the table that he’d just about drunk all by himself – but it wasn’t long before that all that liquid started to make its presence known. Lee (and, irritatingly, Elliott) was busy playing host, so Richard slipped away, figuring that he would be able to find the bathroom himself. On his way back, though, he got distracted by a door that wasn’t quite shut – and curiosity getting the better of him, he pushed it open further, and –

It was a library.

Lee had a library in his apartment.

It was a small one, admittedly, but two of the walls were covered by large bookshelves, both groaning under the weight of their contents. The third wasn’t a wall at all but a floor to ceiling window, matching those in the living area; and stretched along the fourth was an enormous couch, clearly bought because it was long enough for Lee to lie back on and still have room to spare. It was wide, too – wide enough for two – and Richard allowed himself a brief moment of imagining the pair of them stretched out on it, feet by each other’s heads and absorbed in their respective books, maybe a cat napping on one of their laps, the room lit only by the large free-standing lamp as a storm lashed the building, and…

“I see you found my secret hideaway.”

Richard started, his heart leaping into his throat at the sudden intrusion (not to mention the guilt of being caught snooping) – but Lee didn’t seem to mind too much, leaning against the doorframe with his glass in his hand.

“Admittedly, I live in fear of the floor collapsing from the weight of the shelves and all the books – I did tell my insurance company about them, but I don’t fancy crushing the downstairs neighbours to death with my collection.”

Richard heard the words, saw the way Lee smiled at his own joke, but it was the sight of him standing there – using the doorway to prop himself up, the epitome of a relaxed host – that really did it. Over the past nine or so months, he’d managed to train himself not to salivate over the man’s appearance too much when there were other people present, which was why he hadn’t registered how good he looked during the meal itself. But now it was just the two of them, and he could be a fraction less subtle, taking mental notes of Lee’s neat black dress pants and close-fitting burgundy shirt (the colour of the latter so unlike the blues and white that he favoured in the office, and there was something about the contrast between it and his skin that kept drawing Richard’s eyes to his collar and neck and god, all he wanted to do was unbutton the shirt further, press a kiss to the visible soft little hollow at the base of his throat where his collarbones met, feel the warmth of his skin under his lips, and…)

Put a lid on it, he told himself sternly, this is not the time or place.

“I didn’t mean to snoop,” he managed, “it’s just that the door was open and the light was on and…”

“Hey, it doesn’t worry me. Now that you’re here, though,” he added, straightening his slouched limbs and stepping into the room, and Richard’s heart did a funny little flip at the movement, “you might as well have a proper look around – especially since you’ve tolerated me ranting at you about literature for so long. Well – I must confess it’s not all highbrow material, but…”

“Oh?”

“See – we’ve got the ‘guilty pleasure’ shelves over here,” he grinned ruefully, gesturing to the bottom rows of one of the bookshelves, “no judging, please.” When Richard looked closer, he could see that they were indeed filled with popular fiction from the last decade or so, mostly thrillers. It was definitely something that would merit a gentle tease later – Lee had certainly never indicated any interest in anything so trashy before.

But the rest – god, the rest.

He moved quietly, his eyes scanning the spines and drinking in the titles almost too quickly for his brain to process them. They were grouped by genre and then alphabetically by author (which didn’t surprise him at all, once he stopped to consider it): history, politics, technology, travel, even a small poetry section.

All except the top shelf, that was, which housed a strange jumble that didn’t seem to share any characteristics whatsoever. They sat differently, too – the shelf had been modified so that its contents faced forward, like a bookshop display.

“What’s the common denominator here?” he asked, after a long minute inspecting them but coming up empty. 

“They’re my top ten – my all-time favourites.”

He surveyed the shelf again, now even more curious. It held a couple that Lee had loaned him in the last couple of months (now that he thought about it, they’d been some of the ones that some of their most passionate discussions had revolved around) and tacked on the end was the Vietnam book that Richard had told Elliott that Lee would love. Apparently he’d been even more right than he’d hoped.

“This one? Really?” he asked with a happy grin as he gestured to it – a grin that Lee wouldn’t be able to understand, since he didn’t know that Richard had been the one to find it in the first place.

“Yep, that’s the most recent addition – I borrowed it from the library and reread it after that lunchtime discussion with you, realised that I loved it even more the second time around, so figured I should go and get my own copy.”

Richard concluded that he would mark the recommendation (even if he had made it in a roundabout way, anonymously and via a third party) as his greatest success to date.

The other bookshelf, once he got there, could only be a shrine to Lee’s childhood. Lee had told him enough about the authors he’d read when he was younger, and he saw them all along that wall, the most well-known names leaping out at him: Kipling, Twain, Dahl, Lewis, Tolkien... Some of the books were newer and shinier than others, but there were definitely some early editions in there – even, once he looked closely, a first edition of The Hobbit, something Richard had once coveted. He’d abandoned the idea once he’d realised how much it would cost him, but that clearly hadn’t been a barrier for Lee, who mustn’t have thought twice about adding it to the other first editions in what was clearly an extremely valuable collection.

“This is amazing,” Richard breathed, “god, all of it… It must be worth a fortune. How on earth have you managed to find so many already?”

“Well, it’s not all my work,” Lee acknowledged, “I inherited most of them from my Dad.”

_Inherited._

Richard repeated the word questioningly, the taste of grief filling his mouth even though he didn’t know the rest of the tale (while Lee had said his father was a veteran, he hadn’t said anything to suggest that he wasn’t still around), and Lee nodded once.

“Nearly 18 months ago. Lung cancer. He wasn’t even a smoker, for god’s sake – never had a cigarette in his life. We knew there was no way he was going to get better, but it was awful all the same.” His voice thickened as he spoke, and he took a step away from Richard as though trying to physically apologise for the sombre direction of the conversation.

“God, listen to me. I shouldn’t still be like this, and I don’t want to burden you with my dramas.”

“Hey – you’re not burdening me with anything. If you need to talk, I’m always here to listen.”

Lee nodded, something rigid in his shoulders that Richard hadn’t seen before, and he felt like this was all his fault. He shouldn’t have pried, shouldn’t have looked behind the damn door, it must have been pulled half-shut for a reason; Lee was hosting a dinner party, for Christ’s sake, he didn’t want to spend the evening rehashing his father’s death – and yet he was radiating something that gave Richard the overwhelming impression that he needed to get this off his chest.

“Should we… Do you want to sit down?”

Their knees bumped as they perched on the couch, and Richard took the wine glass from Lee’s hand gently, setting it on the floor as he kept talking.

“He was so pleased when I finally got a job after finishing college, especially at such a prestigious firm, but over time he sort of… changed his mind. After the first couple of years he sat me down for a serious talk and told me that he could see that I was unhappy and that he was worried that the firm was slowly sucking all the life out of me. He was right, of course, but I loved the lifestyle and the money and I just wasn’t ready to hear it. He respected that, but every time I came to visit, he would bring it up again – in a gentle way, reminding rather than nagging, like he was just waiting for the day that I realised he was right. And then the last time, he told me that the only thing he’d ever wanted in life was for me and my siblings to be happy and fulfilled and to understand that there’s more to life than a fat salary. And he said – he said – that if we could do that, then he could go peacefully, feeling like he’d succeeded as a parent. And that was the last time we spoke. He got worse not long after that, and by the time I got there, a few days later, he was in a coma, and he just… He didn’t wake up. He never woke up.”

Lee shook his head like he still couldn’t quite believe it – but even if Richard had been able to come up with some platitudes that wouldn’t sound completely clichéd and meaningless, he wasn’t going to be able to get a word in, because Lee was showing no signs of stopping.

“I quit the day after the funeral. Bought a one-way ticket to India, spent a few months travelling – started off in New Delhi and then worked my way down the west coast, Mumbai, fucking around in Goa and being a trashy tourist when I was sick of the cities… Basically I was just trying to work out the next step, avoiding coming home because I knew it would feel like something was missing and I wasn’t ready to deal with it. But I did, eventually – even partying and drug-taking and meaningless sex in Goa gets old, believe it or not – and yeah, it was shitty being back, and I had a lot of apologising to do to my family for running away, but we got through it. And then about a month later a friend of a friend told me about this job and, well, here I am.”

He managed a little self-deprecating smile at that point, picking up his glass from the floor and draining it before clearing his throat to continue.

“Anyway, that’s a very long winded way of telling you that not everything in here is mine. It was my dad’s and my hobby when I was growing up – lots of these books are ones we picked up when I was in high school, or even younger. That top shelf over there,” he added, gesturing, “is the collection of books that I bought him for his birthday and Christmas every year – he made a little note of the date inside the front cover of each. I didn’t even realise until I unpacked them. And these are the bookshelves from his study – god, it was a mission getting them in here, let me tell you – but they’re so much nicer than the shitty kitsets I had before. I just feel really close to him in here, you know? But there’s something about looking at his collection – our collection – that just drives home what a failure I am.”

“What do you mean?” Richard prompted, his voice coming out in a croaky whisper after staying silent for so long.

“God, it’s stupid. Promise me you won’t laugh.”

“Of course I won’t laugh, Lee.”

“It’s just that, well, he was always such a big fan of Dan Hennah.” A beat. “You’ve never heard of him, right?”

“I can’t say I have, no.”

“Yeah, I’m not really surprised. Dad liked some pretty obscure stuff. But damn, I grew up on those books – first read them when I was fifteen or sixteen. There’s a series of eight. Someone gave Dad a first edition of one of them for his twenty-fifth birthday – yeah, that’s how long he’d been into them – and literally ever since then he’d been obsessed with finishing the whole set. First editions of all of them. But come and look.”

He stood suddenly and Richard followed suit, spellbound, letting Lee lead him to one of the shelves.

“Here they are. Count them.”

There were only seven books there.

“Brutal, right?” he said, with a bitter little twist of a smile. “He spent nearly his whole adult life trying to find them, and he never managed to hunt down book number five. The day I came home with a first edition that I’d found by chance at a bookstore in DC during a high school trip in my senior year – yeah, I was a seventeen year old kid who just wanted to spend all my free time exploring dusty old antique shops – he cried. I’m not kidding. That was how serious he was. But I could never find that last one. All I ever wanted for him, and it eluded me. And now he’s gone and I still can’t fucking find it and every time I so much as glance at that shelf I feel like he’s sitting across from me and looking at me like I’ve let him down.”

He walked back to the couch, sitting down heavily, hands on his knees and neck bent in despair, not looking up as Richard mirrored him.

“I just – I have to find that book one day. I wouldn’t even care how – it’s not like I have to hunt it down myself. It stopped being about that years ago. A friend of Mom’s picked one up at a yard sale – selling for a couple of dollars, because the family had no idea what it was – when I was in college and the look on his face when she presented it to him… I swear he could have kissed her. He was just so thrilled. And so I look, every weekend I can, because everything just feels so unfinished and he won’t be at peace until I have all eight. It’s ridiculous, I know, but hey.”

“It’s not ridiculous,” Richard told him earnestly. It was the most intensely personal information that anyone had ever shared with him – and it was Lee, the man he was completely enamoured with, and Jesus, all he wanted to do was hug him and comfort him and kiss him and love him. But the chances of that – any of that – going down well, without making him look like a creep who was preying on Lee’s emotional state, were pretty limited, so he contented himself with staring down into his glass like it held the answers to everything, hoping that his presence was helping somewhat. If he weren’t so goddamn awkward and nervous he would have touched Lee’s hand and said something reassuring, or at least attempted to.

No – fuck it.

He had a few wines in him, and he wasn’t afraid. If Lee recoiled, he could always put his boldness down to that.

And so he covered Lee’s hand with his own – the first time he’d voluntarily touched him, and it made him wish he’d done it a lot sooner and realise that he should start finding excuses to do it again (and again, and again) because hell, it was so innocuous and yet it made his stomach lurch even more than usual in that excited, infatuated way.

If Lee was surprised by the gesture, he didn’t let on.

“Sorry,” he murmured, “I know this isn’t exactly what you signed up for when I bullied you into coming for dinner. Apparently I just needed to get that off my chest, and you were the unlucky victim.”

“Stop that,” Richard chastised, squeezing his hand slightly to drive the point home, “I said before that I was – I am – happy to listen whenever you need to talk. That’s not going to change. And for what it’s worth… You haven’t let your dad down at all, and I know that he would agree with me. He would be – he is – proud of you for doing what was probably best for you in the long run, and walking away from that firm, and for finding a new job that makes you happy, and for looking after and growing his collection the way you are. One missing book doesn’t make you a failure, Lee, and I will remind you of that every time you need to hear it.”

Lee didn’t respond, save for one very audible swallow, before worming his hand out from under Richard’s.

Richard cringed with anxiety and disappointment – Christ, you’ve put your foot in it now, you’ve overstepped and made him uncomfortable – but it only lasted for a second, because it transpired that the only reason that Lee had removed his hand was so he could twist his upper body to wrap his arms around Richard’s waist, pulling him into a hug and resting his chin on his shoulder.

It was completely unexpected – a hand touch to this in less than a minute – but thankfully Lee didn’t notice the way that Richard stiffened involuntarily at the contact. It took less than a second, though, for his brain to catch up and remind him that he should cherish this moment, at which point he returned the embrace, squeezing Lee just as tightly as Lee was squeezing him.

“Thank you, Richard,” Lee whispered, “I really needed to hear that.”

“It’s okay,” he murmured, trying his best to be comforting but drawing a blank as to what more he could say and hoping that the hug itself was enough, or at least mildly helpful, “you’re okay.”

Lee’s hair was tickling his cheek, and he couldn’t resist reaching up (god knew the opportunity was probably never going to present itself again, and he’d wanted to do this for so long that he couldn’t even feel guilty about taking advantage of Lee’s state) and sliding his fingers through it gently.

Yes, goddamn, it was just as soft as it looked.

And Lee sighed, the last remnants of tension draining out of him as he slumped against Richard, fingers unclenching until his palms were pressed flat to Richard’s back.

Richard took the reaction as an invitation, repeating the movement, this time getting a pleased little murmur and a nose burrowing into his neck and a damp huff of air against his skin and yes, he was going to be replaying this moment in his head for months to come.

Also, he was probably going to hell for enjoying it.

But Lee very clearly needed a hug right now, and Richard wasn’t going to deprive him of that physical contact just because he was afraid that once he hugged Lee, he would never be able to stop. So he shifted closer still, the smell of Lee’s cologne in his nose (although once he nestled in a little further, the cologne gave way to the smell of _Lee_ and god, it was intoxicating, but he did take a moment to appreciate how much of a creep he was being – if sniffing the object of his affections wasn’t a conclusive sign that he’d gone off the deep end, then what was?) and a faint dampness on his cheek that could only have come from a tear.

And still neither of them let go.

Richard would have been quite content to stay there forever, for as long as Lee needed, and Lee didn’t seem to be in any hurry to move either – but of course they would be interrupted eventually, and of course that interruption would come in the form of Elliott.

Thankfully, he called down the hallway and went to check the bathroom first, which gave Richard the chance to disentangle ruefully, wondering if he’d ever resented Elliott quite as much as he did in that moment. Lee was slightly pink in the face, but any tears he might have shed had already dried, and once Richard had smoothed down his hair (Lee hadn’t asked him to, but equally he didn’t give any indication that he minded) he looked as put-together as he had when he’d first walked into the library.

“You’re fine,” Richard told him with a little smile, “a bit flushed – from the wine, obviously, which is to be expected.”

“Thank you,” Lee repeated, something strange and intense in his eyes that Richard hadn’t noticed before, and he felt his heart thudding in his chest as Lee opened his mouth again.

“Richard–”

“There you are,” Elliott said, relieved, as he stepped through the doorway, but his smile faded as he clocked the two of them on the couch. There was a respectable distance between them now, but apparently even Elliott could feel the emotion radiating off Lee, and he clearly didn’t like it at all.

“I’m not interrupting anything, am I?” he checked, in a tone that made Richard quite sure that he knew he _was_ interrupting something and that he was quite glad he had done so. _Yes,_ Richard wanted to scream, yes, you are. Now piss off back to everyone else and let Lee finish whatever he was going to say.

“Of course not,” Lee told him with a friendly grin, his voice sounding so normal that Richard almost wondered if he’d just imagined the last few minutes, “I was just showing Richard my book collection. Was there something you needed?”

“Yeah, um, we broke the corkscrew and can’t find your spare. You do have a spare, right?”

“I do,” Lee laughed, unfolding himself from the couch, “come on, I’ll show you. You too, Richard.”

Richard didn’t think he’d ever wanted to hit someone as much as he wanted to hit Elliott right then, for walking in at the most inopportune time (although, come to think of it, the individual who had broken the corkscrew was equally responsible). Whatever had been on the tip of Lee’s tongue was gone, the moment was lost, and Richard was fairly sure that he wouldn’t be able to bring it up again in future without the whole conversation being staggeringly awkward – so he stood too, following Elliott and Lee back to the kitchen. Elliott threw one last suspicious look at Richard over his shoulder – like he knew he hadn’t heard the whole story, but also (completely implausibly, but still) like he knew that Richard’s thoughts during the embrace hadn’t been entirely pure and he was judging him for it. But he didn’t say anything more and, as it turned out, no one else had even noticed their absence, too busy making their way through Lee’s wine stash and getting steadily tiddlier. Lee reverted to charming host duties immediately, and Richard fell back into the conversation, and the two of them didn’t speak again until it was time for Richard to head home. (The highlight of the rest of the evening, however, had definitely been the reference that one of the other guests made to the weekend that some of them had spent at the apartment working on a project. Nothing had been gelling and they were climbing up the walls in frustration until Lee had made the executive decision to relocate from the office to his place, in the hope that a new environment would help. It did. And after those 36 hours, the team – including Elliott – had an intimate knowledge of where to find just about anything in the apartment. That was it. That was all there was to Elliott’s obvious attempts to co-host the evening. Richard didn’t kick him under the table and give him a smug little smirk, but he definitely thought about it.)

Lee had hugged the guests that had gone already, and Richard was giddy to receive the same treatment, even if the moment wasn’t anywhere near as intimate as the one in the library. What did improve it, though, was Lee’s little whisper in his ear.

“Tell me my cooking wasn’t as terrible as you’d expected.”

“I suppose you’ll have to wait and see if I make it to work in one piece on Monday – and just so you know, if I don’t, I’ll never let you hear the end of it.”

When Lee pulled away, they were both grinning, the little inside joke kindling something warm and happy in the pit of Richard’s stomach – that, and the fact that he could feel Elliott’s eyes burning jealously into his back. And after Lee thanked him emphatically for coming (the tone of his voice telling Richard that that wasn’t the only thing he was grateful for) he walked the whole way home with what was undoubtedly a besotted smile plastered on his face.

In the weeks that followed, as predicted, Lee didn’t give any clues as to what he’d wanted to say before Elliott walked in, and Richard didn’t ask. However, he did offer increasing numbers of anecdotes about his father – relating to both his time in Vietnam and Lee’s childhood – getting a little deeper and more personal each time. Richard had also decided to track down and read the Hennah series of his own volition, now that he understood just how much it meant to Lee (he wasn’t about to ask if he could borrow Lee’s first editions, after all) – and the day that he announced that he’d finished the first book and had barely slept for two days because he hadn’t wanted to put it down, Lee had been unable to help clapping with excitement, a huge beam spreading over his face.

As it turned out, the series just got better with each instalment, and Richard lost count of the number of comfortable – if a little breathless from excitement – hours they spent analysing the finest details of every page. By the time he’d finished all eight, he understood completely why they’d played such a significant part in Lee’s life.

But what had really occupied his thoughts since that night was the fifth book – the one that Lee had spent years looking for – and so when he started to think in earnest about the ramifications of pulling Lee’s name out of the Secret Santa hat, he realised that it was time to dust that knowledge off and put it to good use.

He would track down that Dan Hennah book, the thing that Lee wanted most in the world.

It would be the Secret Santa gift to end all Secret Santa gifts.

He had six weeks.

He’d been idly keeping an eye out for it ever since that conversation, but not making any particular effort. It was clearly time to step up his game. Google had told him that Hennah was from Belfast, which meant that his works were probably more likely to surface in the UK, so he put in calls to his siblings and friends and everyone he could think of who might be willing to spend some time trawling through anywhere that first edition books might surface looking for something so obscure. On this side of the ditch he did the same.

The only person who understood the reason why he was searching quite so frantically, though, was Graham.

Graham was one of his oldest friends – they’d first met when they were about seven, and their paths had kept crossing the whole way through school and university. They’d lost touch for a while after that – but here they were now, decades down the line and somehow closer than ever. That meant that Graham knew, in minute detail, all about Richard’s infatuation with Lee, and had had to listen to him gush on many an occasion (and also, more recently, tolerate his ranting about Elliott, while sensibly pointing out that there was nothing beyond Richard’s irrational suspicions to suggest that they were actually together). He despaired at it a little bit, and couldn’t understand why Richard didn’t just ask him out – or better yet, just kiss him, which was, astonishingly, how Graham had managed to net his wife.

Perhaps most importantly – today, at least – was the fact that Graham worked at an auction house.

“So you’ll do it? Put some feelers out? Let me know if it crosses your path at all?”

“Of course I will, Rich.”

“And money is no object,” he said, “whatever the cost, I want it.” He had funds to spare, after all – few vices, other than wine, which left a surprising amount of disposable income – and he couldn’t think of anything (or anyone) better to spend them on.

“Christ, you’ve got it bad,” Graham sighed, “but yes, I’ll see what I can do. No promises, though.”

“I know, I know.”

He’d been wildly optimistic when he hung up the phone, certain that the book would materialise in a matter of days.

But it didn’t.

Days turned into weeks, November bled into December, and still there was no word. He’d stopped harassing Graham nightly after the first few days when he was unceremoniously told that he was being ridiculous and that of course Graham wouldn’t withhold it from him if and when he did find it (and, astonishingly, that Graham found it a little bit upsetting to hear his pitiful voice and made him feel guilty that he couldn’t immediately source this one thing that Richard wanted so desperately). The others, to their credit, were all doing their best as well, and the nets had been spread far and wide – and so the fact that everyone was continuing to come up empty-handed filled him with crushing disappointment. He wore it on his face like grief, not realising quite how obvious he was being until he was summoned into his manager’s office, only to be asked if he needed to take some bereavement leave.

Even Lee had noticed, asking him quietly during one of their lunches if he was okay and if there was anything he could do to help. He’d almost laughed at that, but thought he had done an adequate job of convincing him (even if, when he’d returned from the bathroom later that afternoon, he’d found a custard square sitting in the middle of his desk that he definitely hadn’t bought himself).

When Graham called on the Monday afternoon before they closed for Christmas, Richard couldn’t help the listlessness of his voice. He had so much work to do – they all did, it was always insane in the lead up to the holidays – and yet all he could do was sit there and think about the opportunity that he’d let slip through his fingers. Why the hell had he pinned all his hopes on being able to find this one obscure book? Why hadn’t he been rational enough to come up with an alternative? Because there was nothing – especially not at short notice – that would be as perfect a gift as a Dan Hennah.

“Are you all right?” Graham asked in that brusque way of his, and Richard tried his best to shake it off.

“I’m fine.”

“You don’t sound it.”

“I’m just tired. It’s been a long year.” That much was true – pining after someone with this level of intensity became exhausting after a while.

Graham paused.

“I’ll come round after work?”

“Fine,” he repeated. Graham wouldn’t mind the complete lack of effort or friendliness on his part. He would understand that Richard had to stockpile any enthusiasm he could inject into his tone for colleagues or clients (both of whom he continued to speak to increasingly frequently); conversations with one of his oldest friends definitely didn’t count.

“Seven?”

“See you then.”

He’d just started on his second glass of wine when Graham arrived – not even bothering to knock, just letting himself in. He looked happy enough until he clocked Richard (slumped on the couch in front of a TV show he wasn’t watching, the mechanical, canned laughter washing over him) and the sad box of chocolates on the table, clearly waiting to be wrapped as his Secret Santa gift.

“Christ, Rich, what’s the matter? Did someone die?”

Only my self-esteem, Richard replied mentally, the wry smile that the thought conjured up not quite making its way onto his face.

Lee will never look twice at me.

I’m a failure.

“I’m just tired,” he repeated, not really bothering to make the words sound convincing, “and I’m ready for the holidays.”

“Well, this’ll cheer you up,” Graham said, plopping down beside Richard on the couch, “got you a present.”

“I don’t have a Christmas tree to put it under,” he said sourly, just for the sake of it, but it didn’t put even the smallest of dents in Graham’s mood.

“No, you have to open it now. Right now.”

“God, Graham, why the urgency? Is this why you insisted on coming over? To give me some gag gift because you wanted to see my reaction?”

“It’s not a gag gift,” Graham grinned, “look, the mug was one time, but I swear this is something that you’ll be excited about.”

“I don’t have the energy to be excited,” he groaned, but Graham’s enthusiasm was starting to rub off on him. That was probably a mistake: the last time Graham had been this delirious about a gift had been the aforementioned mug, and Richard had resolved then that such levels of excitement were never a good sign. (He had initially been grateful for the thoughtful gift, since he’d been idly complaining that nothing in the break room at work was big enough for one of his large cups of tea, and had proudly taken it to work the next day – only to have it pointed out to him, as he sat happily in the break room warming his hands with the mug, that it was one of those ones that changed when it was filled with hot liquid and that the words (not to mention the accompanying image) that had appeared on it were definitely not work-appropriate. Graham had laughed until he was in tears when Richard told him.)

“Are you going to give me a clue?” he asked, caving as he sat up despite himself, both of them able to hear the curiosity in his tone, and Graham’s smile just kept on growing.

“Yeah, um… How about ‘if this doesn’t get you laid, I don’t know what will.’”

The comment took a few seconds to sink in, but then –

Oh, god.

It couldn’t be.

Richard’s heart was thudding frantically against his ribs, the adrenaline making him lightheaded, as Graham reached into one of the inner pockets of his coat and slowly (clearly wanting to draw out the moment just for the sake of it) produced a book.

But not just any book.

“Jesus Christ,” Richard breathed, “fuck, Graham, how did you… Jesus Christ.”

His hands were shaking as he accepted the gift (Graham would probably tease him for it later – who the hell got this emotional over a book? – but right now, he couldn’t bring himself to care at all). He’d seen pictures of the first edition of the fifth book in the Dan Hennah series online – had circulated them to everyone he’d enlisted to look for it – but that excitement paled in comparison to how it felt to hold it, to know that, astonishingly, the search was finally over, with a handful of days to spare.

“Merry Christmas, Richard. Told you it was a good present.”

“The best,” he said disbelievingly, not wanting to take his eyes off it just in case it evaporated (and when he dug his fingernails into his palm it stung, so it wasn’t a dream, it couldn’t be, this was really happening), “you’re the best, Graham. How on earth did you find it? And how much do I owe you?”

“A case of good wine – champagne, actually, I think – and your undying gratitude.”

At that, Richard looked up.

“Huh?”

Embarrassment was not an emotion that Richard often saw on Graham’s face, and it was unsettling to say the least – and yet he couldn’t stop grinning, suddenly understanding where this was going, how Graham had acquired the book, why it wasn’t going to cost him anything.

“There may or may not have been a new consignment in this morning, and I may or may not have been the first one to go through it, and I may or may not have spotted this in amongst the rest of the book collection – which I might add, is colossal, definitely big enough for something to be misplaced somewhere along the way. Plus, I mean, it’s not like it’s _that_ valuable, objectively, not compared to some of the other first editions in there… and I didn’t think anyone would miss it.”

“You could get fired for this, you know,” Richard told him, idly, unable to stop stroking the book jacket, running his thumb over the worn lettering.

“Oh, well, if you’re concerned, I can easily take it back and slip it in with the others and no one will be any the wiser, here –” He reached for it, laughing as Richard snatched it away, clutching it to his chest protectively.

“Oh, not a chance.”

“Mm, that’s what I thought.”

“But seriously – thank you, Graham. Thank you so much. I will never be able to repay you.”

"I'll tell you how you can repay me," Graham told him, pausing for dramatic effect until Richard raised his eyebrows impatiently. "Make sure you reap some rewards from all this. You've been secretly carrying a torch for this guy for how long now? Nearly a year? There’s a point where it stops being romantic and starts becoming a little bit pathetic."

The triumphant grin faded from his face, to be replaced with something much more pensive, and Richard knew he was gearing up to impart some of his wisdom. It was a face he knew well (though it usually prefaced concerns about him being too absorbed in his work and not leaving the house or socialising enough) and this time, just like always, Graham delivered the words he didn’t really want to hear.

“Look, Rich, I say this with the best of intentions, but…”

“Oh, god, the serious tone,” he teased, but no, Graham definitely wasn’t in the mood for joking anymore.

“If he doesn’t appreciate this, if he doesn’t understand the lengths you’ve gone for him, trying to track down this fucking obscure book, then I don’t think he’s right for you.”

“Maybe,” Richard conceded, and Graham interpreted, correctly, the uncertainty in his tone.

“…You _are_ going to tell him that it’s from you, aren’t you?”

Richard shrugged helplessly, and he rolled his eyes. “For Christ’s sake, Rich. You can’t not tell him, not when you’ve gone to so much effort. You’ve practically sparked an international manhunt for this book. Don’t let it all be for nothing.”

Ever since the idea of tracking down the book as his Secret Santa gift had occurred to him, he’d been swinging back and forth on that point: to tell Lee, or to stay silent? There were moments when he’d been one hundred – two hundred, even – percent sure that he would confess if he found it, most of which occurred during their Tuesday lunches, but it was usually only a matter of minutes before he concluded that doing so was the worst idea in all of history and chastised himself for being so ridiculous.

He’d hoped that the answer would finally crystallise in his mind once he had the book in his hands, except it didn’t – not that night, not the night after, or the night after that – until the only option he really had left was to wing it and see what happened. (There was, of course, the remotest of chances that their eyes would meet across the room as everyone opened their gifts and Lee would be able to tell from the look on his face that he was the one responsible (and then maybe sweep him into a passionate embrace while the swell of a romantic movie soundtrack echoed around them), but he would cross that bridge if he ever came to it.)

He had still been delirious with glee by the time his and Lee’s usual lunch date rolled around the day after Graham’s visit. He’d done his best to keep what was probably an almost alarmingly wide smile off his face, but Lee picked up on his mood almost immediately. He attributed it to the imminence of the holidays – prompting an extended discussion of their Christmas plans and family traditions – and Lee had confessed that he was glad to see him looking so much better, after he’d seemed so down for the past couple of weeks.

He’d wrapped the book painstakingly that night, in tissue paper then bubble wrap (god forbid it get wet or bent or manhandled in any way) before the final layer of Christmas wrapping paper, and even went out to find the most obnoxiously large stick-on bow he could. He printed off a nametag – he definitely wasn’t going to write on it himself for fear that someone else would recognise his handwriting – and sneaking it into the Santa sack just around the corner from reception on Wednesday morning was one of the most exhilarating and triumphant moments of his life.

And now here they were, the evening of the last day of work, and Richard’s hands wouldn’t stop shaking. He had already unwrapped his own gift – a nice bottle of pinot noir from someone who clearly knew about his drinking preferences, which he appreciated a lot – but the moment that Madison called out Lee’s name, pulling his parcel from the sack, he felt his heart jump into his throat, beating there like a caged bird as Lee stepped forward to receive his gift.

“Thank you, Maddy,” he beamed, that smile that no one could help but return, and Madison flushed slightly beneath her Santa hat at the warmth of it. He kept on grinning as he unwrapped each layer – but once he got to the tissue paper, the smile fell away completely.

“Oh my god.”

The quiet conversations that had been going on during the distribution tailed off, everyone’s attention focused on Lee and the book in his hands and the expression on his face. To say he was surprised would have been the understatement of the century – he looked completely overwhelmed. Richard was fairly sure that a bomb could have gone off next door and he would still be standing there, staring down at his gift in utter disbelief.

“Oh my god,” he repeated, cradling the book like it was made of glass, but this time his voice came out a little thicker, and when he looked up his eyes were slightly red.

“What is it?” Madison clamoured, the question echoed by everyone else who was standing close enough to see, and Lee cleared his throat obligingly. “It’s, um, it’s a book I’ve wanted a copy of for a long time.” Another little cough, and an embarrassed rub of his eyes. “It’s the best present I’ve ever been given.”

Richard had never been quite so thrilled in his life. All the worry, all the calling in of favours – it had all been so very worth it. He bit down on his bottom lip and stared into his glass so no one would notice his smile.

As he did so, though, a slow murmur started in the furthest corner of the room, drifting between the clusters of people like smoke, and by the time it reached Richard, he realised it was someone’s name.

But not his.

_Elliott._

Sure enough, Elliott was standing there with a bashful little smile (and apparently the fucker could even blush on cue, how convenient) that left no doubt in anyone’s mind as to who had bought the book. He’d obviously figured that the gift purchaser wasn’t going to come forward and that he should claim the praise for himself – the praise, and everything that came with it, going by the way Lee was looking at him, like this was the best moment of his life and it was all down to Elliott.

In all of Richard’s imaginings as to how this moment would pan out, someone else swooping in to take the credit was somehow not something he had considered at all – and Lee’s brilliant smile, turned on Elliott, made his stomach drop down into his shoes. Clearly, Elliott’s crush had become common knowledge around the office over the past few months (Richard wouldn’t know – he couldn’t really be bothered with workplace gossip, and it certainly wasn’t something he wanted to waste his precious hour each week discussing with Lee) and everyone had assumed, based on Lee’s reaction to his present, that such a thoughtful, romantic gesture could be attributed to him alone.

The worst part was that Richard couldn’t do a damn thing about it: if he confessed now, told Lee that he’d bought the book, it would just be his word against Elliott’s. It wasn’t as if he had proof of purchase, and claiming that Graham had stolen it from his work would no doubt be a less plausible explanation than anything Elliott could come up with. No, he’d left it too late, and he had no one to blame but himself (but by god he was going to do his best to blame Elliott, as he replayed this moment in the weeks to come and thought about how much of an idiot he was). That realisation was only hammered home when, after Madison had doled out the rest of the gifts, Lee asked – audibly, at least to Richard – Elliott if he could have a word in private.

Catcalls and whoops followed them out of the room, and Richard concluded that it was time to start getting drunk. He wasn’t usually one to go crazy when it came to free booze at work, but if this wasn’t an exception to that rule then he didn’t know what would be. He would drink enough to take the edge of his misery off, and then he would make his excuses and go home and get stuck into something stronger and _wallow._

But by his third glass of champagne (on a largely empty stomach, no less) not only was he still unpleasantly sober and full of self-loathing, but Lee and Elliott still hadn’t returned. His brain was doing its best to conjure up all sorts of terrible mental images of what they were getting up to, and that made it extremely difficult to concentrate on the conversation in which he was meant to be participating. So he drained his glass, pretended he was due at another party, wished each of his team members a Merry Christmas – his smile was strained and probably more than a little manic by the end of it, but thankfully no one commented – and then escaped, grabbing his coat from his office en route.

He wondered if months – years, even – down the line, Elliott would confess. “You know that book that you got in the Secret Santa exchange at work? I, um… it wasn’t actually from me. Everyone just assumed it was, and you were looking at me like I’d always wished you would, and so I just sort of… decided to go with it.”

And Lee would just laugh, and say it didn’t matter who had bought it because what was important was that it had brought the two of them together. And maybe he would spare a passing thought for the unidentified individual who had gone to so much effort for him, but it would be just that – a passing thought, and no more.

Reception was deserted, thank god, save for the Christmas tree in the corner and the tinsel strung along the desk and the goddamn mistletoe that Madison had hung over the door as a joke. Richard scowled at each of the decorations like they had personally insulted him. Fuck mistletoe, fuck Madison, fuck Christmas, fuck everything. Next year, he would stick to boring old chocolates and be done with it – and he would spend the break getting Lee goddamn Pace out of his head (and definitely, definitely not thinking about how excruciating it was going to be seeing him and Elliott together when he returned to work in January).

“Richard – hey – Richard, wait!”

Life, it seemed, had different plans.

He stopped obligingly (as tempting as it would have been to run, literally run, although knowing him the elevator would take an eternity to arrive just out of spite), his hand still on the doorhandle, turning with a sigh. Lee was standing there, hands on hips, looking thoroughly confused and more than a little frustrated.

“Where are you going?”

“Just downstairs to get some air.”

It was painful to look at Lee now, and Richard was fairly sure that that wasn’t going to change in the near future. Every glance would serve as a razor-sharp reminder of how much of a moron he was, how close he’d come to finally confessing that he was in love but how he just hadn’t had the balls to get there. Graham would never let him hear the end of it, that was for sure, and he resolved to avoid his calls for the next couple of weeks – no doubt there would be a flood of messages waiting when he got home, Graham desperate to know how he’d got on and wanting all the details on how his intervention had saved Richard’s love life. Maybe Richard could pretend that he’d discovered that Lee and Elliott had been together the whole time. (Maybe they really had been. It wasn’t like it would make any difference now.)

“No, I don’t think so,” Lee insisted, quiet and calm, “you’re going to pretend that you’re just stepping outside, but I know that if you go you won’t come back, and I can’t let that happen before I have the chance to thank you.”

“You don’t have anything to thank me for,” Richard muttered, wishing he wasn’t so goddamn transparent and, for an instant, hating the fact that Lee knew him well enough to be able to recognise when he wasn’t telling the truth.

“Of course I do.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about, Lee – please, just let me leave. I have somewhere else to be.” His lies weren’t stacking up, but he didn’t care – he just had to find something that Lee would accept enough to agree that he could go.

“You do not,” Lee countered, “you told me that you intentionally hadn’t made plans this weekend because you haven’t finished your Christmas shopping and have a whole lot of errands to do before you go away for the holidays.”

Fuck it. He had said that, and of course Lee would remember, the one time that Richard didn’t want him to.

“Richard,” he repeated, softer this time, “what’s the matter? Talk to me.”

The confusion and – yes, hurt, or so it seemed – in Lee’s eyes was almost unbearable, and Richard averted his gaze, latching onto a faded patch of carpet by his feet. He should have known that to do so would only prompt Lee to step closer, right into his space, close enough to press a hesitant hand to his arm, and even through the wool of his coat it burned.

“Nothing’s the matter,” he muttered, wanting to shake off Lee’s hand but at the same time wanting him to stay there forever. “You should go – Elliott will be wondering where you’ve snuck off to.”

“Richard,” Lee said slowly, “what on earth are you talking about?”

“You and Elliott,” he explained, ducking his head further to hide the blush that he could feel creeping over his cheeks at finally articulating his fears – except they weren’t fears now so much as unequivocal fact.

Or so he thought.

“There is no me and Elliott,” Lee told him, his eyebrows drawing together at Richard’s assumptions. “There never has been. Yes, I wanted to talk to him alone, because there were things I needed to say that I probably should have said a whole lot earlier – like that, as flattered as I am by his interest in me, he and I could never work.”

“But – he – why not?” Richard sputtered.

“Well, he’s about fifteen years too young for me, for starters. We have nothing in common beyond this firm. He doesn’t make me laugh. Seeing him doesn’t make my stomach flip over with excitement. And even if that wasn’t the case, even if I thought he was someone I could fall for, it still wouldn’t happen. Because if there’s one thing I can’t stand, it’s someone who tries to take the credit for someone else’s ideas.”

“What?”

Richard was doing his best to keep his face neutral – albeit mildly confused – but he would be lying if Lee’s reaction hadn’t made something warm and hopeful flare in his chest. And then there was the matter of his last comment…

“The book,” he said impatiently, “god, Richard, please stop being so obtuse. Of course I knew it was you. There’s nothing you can say to make me think it wasn’t. You’re the only person here who knows all the details of my collecting, and you’re the only person I’ve told about looking for that book. Plus, I like to think I know you well enough to say confidently that you’re not the type to share that kind of information around.”

“I’m not,” Richard said dazedly, trying to digest Lee’s words, the fact that he’d known as soon as he’d opened his gift that Richard was the one responsible for it; that he’d understood immediately, just like in Richard’s most idealistic dreams. (He wouldn’t lie – the fact that Lee had told no one else about the Hennah series or the reason he was looking for that final first edition, that he trusted Richard and felt that close to him, also made him giddy with pleasure.)

“I just didn’t want to embarrass you in front of everyone by thanking you the way I wanted to,” Lee explained, his voice gentler now. “I mean, if you’d wanted to draw attention to yourself, you would have handwritten the label. But you knew what it meant to me, and you’re the only one who would go to so much effort – and then try to pretend it wasn’t you at all – and that’s why I didn’t want to let you leave without thanking you.”

“Right, well… Consider me thanked?”

“Actually, I had a different kind of ‘thank you’ in mind.”

“Well, I’ll look forward to seeing you in the New Year to collect my bottle of wine or all the custard squares in the bakery or whatever it is you’re planning.”

Lee just frowned at him. “Richard,” he said slowly, clearly perplexed, “I have no idea what you’re on about.”

“You said you wanted to give me a different sort of ‘thank you,’” Richard elaborated, confused, “and you already know I’m partial to those things – although that’s not to say I wouldn’t appreciate something else if you already have a particular idea, and, of course, I was only doing my Secret Santa duty so you’re really not required to thank me at all, and –”

“Richard?” Lee asked, interrupting him mid-ramble.

“Yes?”

“Look up.”

Richard did so obligingly, only to see that they were standing under Madison’s mistletoe. Oh, it was the cruellest of jokes – maybe next year he would take it down and throw it away when no one was looking – but when he looked back to Lee and saw the little smile on his face, he wondered if it was a joke at all. To be on the safe side, though, when Lee stepped closer still (surely close enough to hear the pounding of Richard’s heart), he did the polite thing, turning his head to present his cheek. Hey, he would take a kiss on the cheek if it was on offer, and he would cherish the memory of each millisecond because surely it was the best he was ever going to get from Lee.

Except Lee didn’t close the gap, instead letting out a little huff of laughter that Richard felt more than heard – and when he spoke, his tone was gently teasing.

“You know that’s not how a kiss under the mistletoe is meant to work, right?”

“I don’t –”

But he was powerless to finish his thought, whatever confused noise he’d wanted to make dying in his throat as Lee lifted his hand, taking Richard’s chin in his fingers and tilting it upwards. His eyes travelled from Richard’s down to his mouth and back up again, like he was asking a silent question that Richard had never imagined having to answer. So he let his own gaze slide lower, mimicking Lee’s by trailing down his face to his lips (which were slightly parted and plush and as goddamn inviting as ever) and almost as soon as he did, those lips were on his, and he was being kissed under the mistletoe for the very first time.

It only lasted a second, but that second was blissful.

It may even have been one of the best of Richard’s life.

However, it was also underpinned by the rather depressing knowledge that Lee had only kissed him out of obligation.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he muttered, after it was over and he’d opened his eyes again.

“I didn’t have to do what?”

“You know – kiss me.” Mortifyingly, he felt his cheeks start to pink up at his bluntness, as though he was articulating something that should never be trivialised by being put into words. “I’m pretty sure it’s only unmarried women who are condemned to stay single for the year if they don’t kiss when they’re under the mistletoe, so you would probably have been safe anyway.”

Lee shook his head with a little despairing sigh.

“You still don’t get it, do you?”

“Get what?”

“The mistletoe was just a convenient excuse.”

“To do what?”

Christ, Richard, he told himself, you’re sure doing a spectacular job of winning him over with your sparkling wit and intelligent conversation.

But Lee didn’t seem deterred in the slightest by his repetitive, confused questions – quite the opposite, in fact – and also appeared to be more than happy to answer them.

“To do something that I’ve been wanting to do for a while,” he murmured, “and something that I’m planning to do again right about… now.”

Before Richard had had a chance to analyse his words – any of them, in fact, because had he actually just said that he’d kissed him out of desire rather than superstition and that it was something he’d thought about before? – Lee was leaning in again, and Richard certainly wasn’t going to stop him.

This kiss lasted longer – markedly longer, in fact – and yet the moment remained very quiet and still and so lovely that Richard forgot how to breathe, so preoccupied with the gentle movements of Lee’s mouth against his, their lips fitting together like they were made for each other.

But this wasn’t a traditional mistletoe kiss. It couldn’t be. Surely if it was, they would be standing a respectable distance apart, their lips the only point of contact. Surely Lee’s arm wouldn’t have curled loosely around his waist, and his other hand wouldn’t have moved from his chin to cup his cheek.

Surely he would have pulled away by now.

And yet he hadn’t.

But the kiss came to an end, as all kisses did, by which time Richard was dizzy from a lack of oxygen, his legs so unstable that they were probably going to give out as soon as Lee let go of him – and his mind so blissfully fuzzy (how was it that the kisses had got him feeling drunker than the champagne?) that he didn’t even realise what he was saying until the words had popped out of his mouth.

“I love you.”

It took a few seconds for his brain to catch up, to realise that yes, he had just said that out loud in front of Lee and Christ almighty, he wanted to curl up and die, an intense blush spreading over his cheeks – and hell, probably every inch of his body – as he cringed. This was, some distant corner of his mind concluded, the most horrifying moment of his life.

And Lee – well, he just looked completely thunderstruck, the little smile that had been lingering on the corners of his mouth after the kiss melting away until it was almost as though it had never been there at all and he had never looked at Richard with anything other than this undisguised shock.

“You – you don’t – I – what?”

Apparently it was now his turn to be incoherent, something for which Richard was mildly grateful – but he pulled himself together quickly, shaking his head slightly in what could have been disbelief.

“Sorry, Richard, can you – would you mind repeating that? I need to be sure that I heard you right, and I don’t – I can’t – just – say it again? Please?”

Faced with Lee’s questioning eyes and pleading tone, Richard could only obey, as much as he didn’t want to repeat the damning words. So he swallowed hard, eyeing the carpet again as he gathered his courage, before looking up and opening his mouth and oh, fuck it all.

“I love you. I’ve been in love with you for the better part of a year.”

There was no way he could fix the situation, so he might as well just admit everything to Lee and watch their carefully cultivated friendship come crashing down around them. (At the same time, it was almost a relief to finally say it – even if this definitely wasn’t how he’d ever imagined the confession happening – to lay his cards on the table for inspection and see what happened next). Lee, to his credit, still hadn’t recoiled or run away and, on the whole, hadn’t reacted as violently as Richard would have expected. Even so, the next words out of his mouth weren’t exactly a surprise.

“I wish you’d told me sooner.”

“So you could have let me down gently months ago, like you just did to Elliott, and gotten on with things?” Richard said dully, almost wishing he’d fled the office when he’d had the chance (the kisses had certainly been spectacular, and he wouldn’t trade them for anything, but this conversation wasn’t going to be anything less than _excruciating_ ).

“No, you idiot, so I could have saved myself months of fretting over whether I should tell you that I have feelings for you too – because all the times that I thought about kissing you, I never dared to imagine that this would be your reaction.”

Well, that _was_ a surprise.

No – surprise didn’t even begin to cover it. So Richard just blinked stupidly at him, his mouth quite possibly hanging open, and he had to be kidding except this was Lee and he wouldn’t joke about something as serious as this and he certainly didn’t look like he was and nothing in the world made sense any more and Richard certainly couldn’t think of anything intelligent to say in response.

“You never said.”

“Neither did you,” Lee reminded him, his smile gentle, and all Richard could do was sputter in astonishment.

“Since when?”

“Well,” Lee said thoughtfully, “I guess my first clue came on my first day of work, when I couldn’t remember literally anyone’s names outside of my team except for yours.”

Oh.

“It sounds so ridiculous now, but I couldn’t get you out of my head. But you didn’t seem to socialise much with the account execs, and I never knew how to approach you. When you found me in the bookstore – well, it was an opportunity. So I took it, and god, I was – I _am_ – so glad that I did. And then I finally acknowledged to myself that I was in love with you that night that everyone came for dinner and we were talking in my library. That was the moment when I realised everything I’d felt all year wasn’t just a silly crush that was going to go away on its own.”

The dinner party. The hug. Christ, was _that_ what Lee had wanted to say before Elliott walked in?

“I can’t go in there anymore without thinking of you,” Lee continued, “and it’s lovely, really, because I like curling up on that couch and imagining how much cosier it would be with you, but at the same time… my brain doesn’t really need the excuse, you know? You occupy my thoughts so much of the time as it is.”

“I do?”

“Yes, Richard, you do. That’s what I’m telling you.”

This time it was Richard who initiated the kiss (their _third,_ a distant voice in his head reminded him in disbelief, despite being so sure just a few minutes ago that there was no hope for him at all) – and it was Richard who, recklessly, whispered his tongue along Lee’s bottom lip and then into his mouth. The first nudge of his tongue against Lee’s was intoxicating, and he wondered if every kiss was going to be like this, leaving him as breathless as if all the oxygen had been sucked out of the room and his heart slamming against his ribs. Both of Lee’s hands were on his face now, cradling his jaw like he was something fragile to be treasured, and at some point Richard’s had stopped being dead weights at his sides and had bunched in the fabric of Lee’s shirt at the small of his back – if it hadn’t been tucked in, he definitely would have slid his hands under it, but as it was he contented himself with pressing Lee closer and closer still as he drank in every tiny detail of the moment. 

And it was so goddamn exquisite that he wanted to cry.

Lee let out a low little whine when Richard eventually broke the kiss, fingers sliding around to twist into his hair impatiently, but they stilled when Richard pressed his thumb to the bow of Lee’s top lip, relishing its softness in much the same way he had when he’d taken it between his own.

As it turned out, it was a very effective way to stop Lee in his tracks, leaving Richard free to speak.

“I still don’t understand.”

“What more is there to understand?” Lee asked, still looking extremely put out by the kisses ceasing – and that, too, made Richard incredibly happy, but at the same time, he was dying to know the answer to the question that had been ricocheting around in his brain for the last several minutes, even when Lee’s mouth was hot on his, kissing him like he’d always wished he would.

“Why didn’t you tell me sooner? I mean, I know you’re not exactly the shy type,” he added, earning a bashful little grin of concession from Lee. “You never gave any indication that you were the least bit interested in me in that way, and I never knew if it was because I was the wrong gender, or you were in a relationship, or you just didn’t like me as more than a friend… I mean, I wasn’t even sure you swung my way until Elliott asked me for tips on how to woo you, and even then...”

“Elliott – he – what?” Lee sputtered, “did he – when – oh.” He paused, like something was clicking into place in his mind, and then narrowed his eyes at Richard. “You told him to tell me about that book, didn’t you?”

“Which book?” Richard asked, playing dumb.

“You know full well which book.”

“I – yes. I told him.” It wasn’t worth trying to maintain the charade, not now, and Lee just shook his head in disbelief.

“I wondered, you know. I thought it was more your kind of book, especially after I discovered that Elliott hadn’t really understood it. But you never said anything, so I eventually just assumed that I’d been imagining it. And as for why I didn’t tell you sooner… Would it be too much of a cliché to say that I didn’t want to ruin our friendship? Our Tuesday lunches are one of my favourite things about this job, and the prospect of scaring you away was a little too real. Somehow I’ve spent the last year laying myself bare for you – you know more about me than almost anyone else outside of my family – and it would have devastated me if I told you the truth and you didn’t feel the same. Now, of course,” he added, “I wish I’d said something months ago.”

“Oh, trust me, that’s mutual,” Richard grinned, buoyed up with confidence. It was a sensation that he wasn’t that used to when it came to relationships, and he liked it a lot.

“And speaking of feelings… There’s one other thing that I probably haven’t made as clear as I should have,” Lee said, the light in his eyes reassuring Richard that it wasn’t anything terrible.

“Mm?”

“I love you, too.”

It was all Richard had ever wanted to hear.

“I bet you’d say that to any man who brought you a first edition Dan Hennah,” he teased, hoping that Lee wouldn’t mind his lame attempt at humour.

(He didn’t.)

“I do love you for that,” he conceded with a smile, “but I love you more for everything else.”

That, too, meant everything in the world to Richard.

“I’ve got to ask, though – how on earth did you find it? I swear to god, if you tell me that you just happened upon it in a bookstore, I might scream.”

“I’ll tell you if you kiss me again,” Richard bargained. Well, it was going to come out sooner or later, so he might as well use the fact that Lee wanted to know for extortive purposes for as long as he could.

“Hmm. Just the once?”

“No,” he said thoughtfully, “but a thousand times should do it.”

Lee just grinned down at him, wrapping one arm tighter around his waist, his other hand sliding up the back of Richard’s neck and into his hair. Richard thought he could quite happily spend years – the rest of his life, even – in this embrace, and wondered recklessly whether he would get the chance to do so.

“I think I can work with that.”

**Author's Note:**

> Another nice short calendar contribution from me ;)
> 
> Thank you to everyone who has taken part in the calendar (and especially to Laeti and velcroboyfriends for organising it - not to mention for letting me blatantly ignore all my submission deadlines...) It's been so lovely to see all the Christmas-themed things that people have come up with :D
> 
> On a slightly more personal note, I have had such an amazing year in this fandom - I sort of fell into it by chance but I have met some pretty incredible people - with special thanks and gushing due to Laurelin for being so unfailingly lovely and inspirational (mush bomb ahoy!) and for always flinging ideas at me and tolerating my flinging in return ;)
> 
> So here's to 2016 being another year of richlee goodness!
> 
> Kudos and comments are loved :)


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